Meet Melissa Hockenberry: First Things First (EP 780)

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals and managed service providers, where we try to help you run your business better, smarter, and faster. And today we have a meet and greet show. I have a new person that I met a while back and I'm going to introduce her on the show.

Her name is Melissa Hockenberry, and she has an interesting history going back to the days of Autotask and Datto, and now has become somebody who is helping us with customer success, training, community engagement, all that sort of stuff. So we're going to get into all that. Melissa, welcome to the show.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Thank you so much, Marv. It's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So, of course, I got to ask, your history, what would lead you to kind of get into that?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yes. So my history, so yeah, I started with Autotask in 2004, which was just after Autotask had started. I was employee number nine, and I was hired with their first bit of venture capital funding.

So it was really early, early, early stages. We were in a tiny little house called The Mansion, and it was a ton of fun. It was so cool.

I had not been, my life prior to that had not been tech at all. So I sort of just fell into it and loved the experience and went through that. And actually, in a time where Autotask had done away with my job, my daughter was four at the time, I wasn't sure what I was going to do.

I had the opportunity to stay on. They just eliminated a position, but gave me another position. And I was getting ready to like, not so sure, and my four-year-old from the backseat said, Mom, you can't leave.

You love your customers too much, when your four-year-old convinces you, right? So I stayed on, but I realized that I really did love customers. And then right around the reckoning time for so many people, I was going to turn 50 in about 13 months.

I was like, I'm not going to keep doing this. And I had felt like I'm a very faith-based person, so I have a lot of prayer in my life and really felt like I wasn't supposed to be under somebody else's W-2 getting a paycheck anymore, which is crazy frightening for me, but felt sort of led to step out on my own. And when I had lost the job like 10 years earlier, like the job was eliminated, I had thought about consulting, but I was like, ah, how would I do it?

What would I do? It was a little too scary. But my daughter's statement, you love your customers too much, just sort of kept resonating.

I'm like, okay, do I step away from the whole industry? And I kind of took time. I stepped away for a little while.

I did leave Kaseya. It was a decision on my own, but then it took a little bit of time, 18 and a half years in one place. You need at least a little bit, like a month or so to be like, okay, let me clear my mind and clear my thought process.

And as I continued, I was like, yeah, I'm going to stick with MSPs because I just love them. Like they're brilliant humans. And yet my skillset is really different from theirs.

And so that's where I felt the consulting would work well because I've always had a pretty intense focus on what the customer is experiencing and how the customer feels and bringing that perspective into conversations. And I find that there's a lot of MSPs that benefit from that because they're very technically minded and very much about securing the customer and providing up time, but they're not always thinking about what is the experience they're dishing out in the process of actually doing all of that. So the consulting came kind of naturally after that.

[Uncle Marv]
So that sounds like a interesting story once you get into the MSP side, but I want to go back and ask you because you talked about your initial start wasn't in tech. So when I looked up your history, I saw that you were a merchandise manager at JCPenney. You were doing something at the United Way, a not-for-profit agency.

So non-technical stuff there. So why the jump into tech at Autotask?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yeah. So JCPenney was phenomenal. I would always say people kind of look down on retail, but as a merchandise manager, I managed my own business.

Like I hired everybody. I purchased everything. They had a subset, but then I bought everything and it was phenomenal experience.

And in six years, I learned a lot and was at 22, was closing a $4 million store. So it was really kind of amazing to be part of that. But then got like fed up with corporate, never saw how much benefit there was in corporate until I got older, that learning that I did there.

So then I landed in United Way for a while, but also realized I'd rather give money to nonprofits than actually work with them. The pace was too slow for me. And as I say, I think I kicked every sacred cow that there was in the organization because I questioned the inefficiencies.

And so I was like, okay, I'm made for corporate, but where am I made? And interestingly enough, it came out of the source of my mom advice from my mother. My mother used to always say to me, never leave a compliment from somebody or someone in your head.

So I would go home from church and I'd say, you know, Mrs. Reynolds looks so nice today. Well, why did you, did you tell her that? She'd get really upset if you left a compliment in your head.

So I was getting ready to leave a career fair when I was desperately searching for a new job and having had no success. And there was a woman who had amazing nails and I stopped to say to her, you have amazing fingernails. And she said, thanks.

I said, they look so good. And we started having, she asked me if things had gone well and I'm like, no, this was worthless and blah, blah, blah. Her husband worked for a company and she got me connected to him and my, my resume landed there.

Then when I got fed up with United Way and the challenges there, I just started telling everyone I was that kind of person that didn't do very well keeping things a secret. I'm like, this doesn't work for me. I need to get out.

And so I was talking to a young lady at my chiropractor's office and I said how it wasn't working. She actually took over a job. The chiropractor had offered me her job.

So she took the job I couldn't, I didn't want, I wanted it, but finances and all those kind of things couldn't pay me enough. And she said, you know, I met this cool guy in this, in this coffee shop named Dick Frederick. And if you know, everybody knows Bob Gygart, but Bob and Dick Frederick were actually the two people who founded Autotask.

And she's like, he's looking for somebody. Would you be interested in going and talking with them? And so I kind of went, when you go to small companies like that, you sort of go for a position, but they sort of look at where your blend and your build and your abilities are.

And while I was like looking at maybe an office manager, they sort of said, you know what, you might be a good technician and like a support rep because of your past retail experience and your ability to troubleshoot and that kind of thing. And so that's how I landed there was a conversation at my chiropractor's office with somebody who took a job I was supposed to have. So it was very, very interesting that I just sort of landed from a connection.

[Uncle Marv]
Absolutely interesting. And the fact that they would say you would make a good quote unquote tech support. I mean, that's a, that's a big jump with no experience in tech.

So you were, you were their first dedicated product support specialist. So of course I'm going to ask how long did it take you to become specialized in a tech that you knew nothing about?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yeah. So, you know, I am an eager learner. I come from educators.

So in my family, you didn't go just look it up. You learned it, right? Like, yes, you can look it up, but tell me why that makes sense.

Tell me why that doesn't make sense. So my parents were both educators and actually I have a lot of educators still in my line of siblings and cousins and that kind of thing. And so I, the benefit of a small company like that is I got to go sit with the engineers and watch what they were coding.

So when I got in, you know, Hey, this isn't working. It wasn't a throw that ticket over to Deb. It was throw the ticket over to Deb, but then go walk over there, stand by them.

So they work on it kind of thing. And so I have a pretty logical brain. I have a creative brain, but I have a pretty logical brain.

I have a kind of blessed with a nice blend. And so I could understand the logic and I had taken actually an access, a database, you know, table course when I was trying to get out of JCPenney, I had gone and taken a Microsoft access course. So I understood the core like SQL concepts.

And then of course, I understood the business because Autotask is a business application, right? So it is, it's all about the, you know, that side of it. And so that was the benefit to me was like it, all the things that the contracts module was doing or service desk was doing or CRM was doing, that made sense because I was under my undergraduate was a, was business.

And the time I was getting my MBA while I was first working at Autotask, I was working through my MBA as well. And so it, the, it was easier than it seemed because of the back history I had and how my brain worked and connected things. So it took me probably six months to a year.

The product was not nearly as complex. But when you're like, it's like going to Spain to learn Spanish, it's a whole lot faster than sending a Spanish class, right? Like I was emerged in the product and I worked a lot of hours.

So yeah, I would say, cause within a year I was their first promotion. I hired somebody and I became their first product support manager.

[Uncle Marv]
So it was a year or two. So where we're going to end up is that you are doing this consulting with First Things First and I'm going to ask, did that come out of the book that Stephen Covey wrote, First Things First?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
No, it actually came out of a statement from Kurt Warner. Boy, I'm going to hope I get that right.

[Uncle Marv]
Kurt Warner. Okay.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
He was, he was the Rams quarterback at one point, right? Do I have all those names?

[Uncle Marv]
Yep. You're good there so far.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I love football, but okay. Basically I'm just a Steelers fan. So everybody else is just noise, but when he, when he won the Superbowl once he made the statement people wanted to hear about the game plan and everything else.

And he said, First Things First, I want to thank my Lord and Savior. And I heard that and I thought, you know what, that's, that's the strength that I get through every day. So the First Things First really came from that.

And it came from the fact that I often need to think of myself and remind myself to do First Things First. I can dive in and get into the weeds very quickly. And so it was as much a reminder to me of where my strength comes from as also a reminder to be like, let's level set this.

Because sometimes when I start to talk with somebody, they're already in to the minutia of the little ant on the ground. And I'm like, okay, let's step back and look at the forest that we are in that you've created. Right?

Let's, let's take the big picture. So I find myself, even after I picked it, I didn't think I used it as often as I did. And as I realized, I'm like, no, I actually do First Things First quite often.

So, so it came from, it came from that I learned he actually has a foundation with that same name. Yes. But it, it resonated well for me, first for the first and foremost, for my faith.

But secondly, because it really is my approach to remind myself, step back, because the problem is not usually what, it's the same thing as troubleshooting a software or anything. The problem is usually not what someone states. Right?

So you have to First Things First, let's see where we need to start talking about this, as opposed to where we may get to. But let's take some step back and, and see where the bigger, where the bigger challenges we may need to deal with.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay, so that makes a little bit of sense. If you know, Kurt Warner, and his story, and all of that, which I do. So big Kurt Warner fan here.

The greatest show on turf.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yes. Yes. So, and it also was a good song.

When I made the decision, there was a song that was actually released called First Things First. And I love it. And so I was like, Oh, that was perfect.

I had made the decision. The song came out shortly after that.

[Uncle Marv]
So I don't, I don't know that song. Who, who, who was that?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Consumed by Fire is the, is the artist. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. We'll look that up and see if I recognize. So I wanted to kind of ease into the First Things First training consulting, because a lot of that was born out of your experiences at Autotask, Kaseya, Datto, etc.

And you went through several job promotions, changes, and stuff like that. You ended up being the customer experience director, training program manager. You were the community manager at Datto.

So obviously you got to see a lot about MSPs, how they worked, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of that good stuff. What was it that you saw with MSPs where I guess we were lacking and needed more help in, in all of these things?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I say it often, like, and I will say it again, MSPs are really brilliant humans. Their ability, their, they connect things and solve things and process things. Like I'm just always in awe of it.

And in that same vein, that makes them less likely to have a high empathy element. And yet everything comes down to the people at the end of the day. When I was at JCPenney, I did a presentation for regional managers when I was a couple years into the job.

And I titled that presentation, The Profit is in the People. To me, the people are both your employees and your customers. So I call them internal customers and external customers, that's how I like to approach it.

And what I found was lacking was just that ability to make the relation and the connection to keep people, to maintain good employees, because knowing how to motivate them and communicate with them. And then also the ability to understand that your customers are not idiots, because I would hear that a lot. And just that they think differently.

And starting to get, I'm working on a course right now, actually, but about getting sort of like the, not the customer lens, I like to call it the customer goggles, because I've been a swim mom for over a decade. So it's putting on that viewpoint and trying to put some basic questions and communication skills in place for MSPs that allow them to start to think, if I make this change, how might that affect my customer? And so that's what I think really, that's what I saw predominantly was throughout the training I did throughout, I mean, I've trained literally hundreds of MSPs and then through the community work, I just don't always see people struggling on the human connection of how do I do that?

There were some owners that were really good at it. But that was not common, because most of them had been technicians and they'd solved problems and things were black and white. And when they had to move into the gray spot of being an owner, it was harder sometimes to be able to make that transition.

So that's where I felt I could step in and help come alongside them to guide, to round out their ability to be truly, I don't like to use the word customer centered because I think that's overused, but customer empathetic, like understanding the customer view a lot more.

[Uncle Marv]
So is this the type of training that you were doing while you were at Datto? Were you training MSPs on these sort of things or were you training them around the products at Datto?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I was training them around the product. So my training was all on auto task. However, I think what made me successful with it was the tool was an element of the training.

The conversation was much more about the business process, because that's what it is when you're talking about a PSA, right? You've got to understand your business process. You've got to understand what good and bad process is like.

So with the confidence I had from my MBA and everything, I felt comfortable saying that's not the way to do it. Like when it came to the business process, I was okay with calling people out on the fact that you're trying to move people to managed service, then why are you discounting when they get an extra block of hours, right? That was a thing that used to drive me crazy.

I'm like, you're trying to get them all in on something yet you're making it cheaper for them to not be all in and only buy blocks of hours from you. So while the focus was definitely auto task training, people will tell you I definitely had opinions and would help them talk about and work through the business. I couldn't hedge away from business because business was actually my comfort zone.

The tool was just let me talk about it and learn it and help people.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, that's interesting. I noted that because I can't imagine vendors would be that focused to say to an MSP, why are you discounting hours? So how did you get to that point where you were actually having those discussions?

And I'm going to phrase this gently. How would you have the audacity to tell the MSP how to set their prices?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I think because, you know, I had even starting at auto task, I had 10 years in business. I mean, JCPenney is not what it used to be, but it was a Fortune 500, I think, at the point that I worked for it. So I had learned pricing structures and hiring structures and procurement and that kind of thing from a really top notch organization at the time I was there.

That was the early 90s. So, wow, I just really dated myself, but that's OK. So and I think that I had great confidence about what was the right way to do business.

And I would always be open to a conversation. But there were just some basic rules that I would always say, I'm going to go there with this. I'm going to go on record of having said this.

Many people heard me say it. It's like the statement of why would you think that a guy living with you was ever going to marry you? He is getting the milk for free.

As my grandmother would tell me, right. So it's so why are they going to go? You're not making it uncomfortable for them.

You're not proving to them. You're saying, oh, I want you to do this thing over here, but I'm going to keep rewarding you. It's like parenting where people get that wrong.

So I'm going to keep rewarding you for this behavior. I don't want instead of having a true sit down conversation and a bit of the confrontation. And I think that's the relational side of business that I felt comfortable saying, hey, listen, this is how you do it.

I was on a peer group meeting last week and we were talking about getting better documentation and getting a better expectation. And I said, why don't you just start with your next employee? And I think that's the kind of thing people don't realize is like, if you didn't do it right so far, start with the next one.

I didn't have a second kid, but there are things I would do differently. I have a good kid, but there are things I screwed up that I would do differently. And I think that's as a business owner, those are the things I felt comfortable.

Like I have great respect, obviously, for all the technical side of what they did. But I didn't have a lot of people push back because I think when they thought it through, the rationale made sense. So but I was always open if somebody said it works for me, this is my job.

And I said, that's great. But then don't get frustrated when you don't have managed service customers. It's OK if that works for you, run with it.

But if you want to change behavior, you need to start rewarding the things you want and not the things you don't want. So, yeah, I guess I was audacious. I don't think I ever really thought of it that way.

But I think you're right.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, it's funny because so I never did block hours. I did do retainers and I started out before managed services. That's going to date me just so we're dating each other together.

But I never did the block hours. And I know I know a lot of MSPs that would do block hours. And yes, they would always be discounted.

And I know that the concept of block hours was to get money up front. And I hated block hours because I'm like, I don't want to keep track. Of what was used and not used.

And I also didn't want to keep track of discounts and stuff like that. Now, I do get I do give discounts for projects and stuff like that. But the whole idea of discounting block hours, I get what you're saying is the service is still the service.

And I learned that from an attorney when he asked me why I was billing differently for travel versus on site or remote, whatever he goes, your time is your time.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
And that's what we should all learn from attorneys on that front. Right. Like it really was.

And I think the thing that I would always try to say was like, you know, they'll be in a better, healthier state if you can get them on like the tech. They never really talked much about stack way back then in all sincerity. But the stack that you want them on.

So talk. And it was really giving people the words to approach that conversation. Because I was the non, I mean, I'm much more technically savvy, obviously, after all those years and things.

But I didn't come from that. So especially in the early years, I could always say to them, sit down and speak to me in terms I understand. Like, find an analogy that works.

Find something that works that I can relate to. And then I'm going to buy in. And if I don't, then I'm not the customer you want.

That was the other conversation we had. Because, you know, if you think about, I started in 04. That means 07, 08 was hitting stride.

And we were in major recession. And I had the honor of working through a grant program that Autotask basically gave to small businesses. And but we would have the conversation about, there was a great article from Forbes that year, that when you're in that kind of recession, you can't afford to have the wrong customers.

You can't be spending your time. You need to be spending your time on the most profitable customers. And that was always a preaching point for me as well, was what is your profitability?

You've got to understand your profitability. And over a decade later, I'm still amazed at the number of people that don't really, still don't get that, even at a corporate, you know, even at a company level, so.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, it's all about growing and getting more endpoints at whatever the cost, right?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
And that's exactly, and that's the challenge. When I started making videos, when I started in my own business, I was like, how do I explain to people? And I'm like, well, I can get my little passion points and make some videos.

And one video I talked about is like, some things are just math. You can't say I have a goal to get to a 12 or 15 or 20% margin when you have no idea what the margin is on anything you're selling. If you only have 5% margins, you just put yourself up to a mathematical wall that is not coming down.

Your goal is never happening if anything you sell only has a 5% margin. And sometimes it's just that, these brilliant minds just don't always think. It's not that they can't understand it.

It's just no one has presented it as a point that they need to comprehend to be successful.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, so I'm going to dig on that just a little bit because I always try to tell people, stop going with whatever margin you hear that somebody else is using because that margin works for them, their situation, their area. Because a lot of times we give, we throw out numbers for somebody in New York City that isn't going to work in Raleigh, North Carolina. Correct.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yes, exactly. And that goes back to the bigger point. If we go even further back in the conversation, the conversation is really about who are you as a company, which gets into the mushy feeling, but it really does.

I just had somebody say, well, we want to give White Glove service and we're looking for a place to outsource some of our work to like a third party call center. I'm like, I'm sorry, those two phrases do not go in the same sentence.

[Uncle Marv]
That's not White Glove service.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
That's the work. And there's nothing, I get it, but I think people don't, that's where I say, first things first, who are you? If you are the be all to everyone and you're not going to get into a market niche and you're just going to be the provider in your area, then okay, think about that.

And think about the fact that your time is your time because people are going to want you to come on. That's great. I'm going to come on up at the same exact rate as if I stayed in my office.

And that way I'm going to get maybe the margin I need to be able to work through things. And the other thing is, is are you going to build a business? I know when you and I talked, you're going to build a business pretty much on referral.

Like people are just going to know, this is what he does really well. And I think you fit that. So you need to go talk to Marv.

Like that's a big difference as to, I'm going to be the be all end all of LinkedIn ads. That margin is going to be different, right? So I think you're very right in the fact that you, people don't want to think that margin has something to do with like vision and identity as a business, but it does.

And that's kind of the hard work I see a lot of people not necessarily wanting to do. And so I've, yeah, I think that's a conversation I have more often of like, okay, I'm not sure where we want to go here because I'm not sure if you know who you are yet.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So I wasn't going to go here today. I was going to save this for later.

And this is probably a good point to tell the listeners that this is part one of meeting Melissa. She is going to be back for a live show on Wednesday, March 12th. And so today was just supposed to be an introduction.

Let's get to know each other. Although now we find ourselves digging a little deep. And one of the things that I had saved as a bullet point for the next show was your website has a phrase that says, relationship builds customer retention.

Retention builds revenue. And I wanted to kind of, the discussion we were just having sort of amplifies that because a lot of my customers are clients that I've had for years. And it is the relationship that I built up with them that has allowed for me to build revenue with them to the point where even if you're talking about buying a computer, they know that they can go buy a cheaper computer somewhere else, but they're like, Marvin, you're our guy.

You take care of us. I'd rather pay you. And that's what's worked for me.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yes. Yes, exactly. And that's, so I know there are people that I am not going to work well with because if you're truly a transactional business, like that's how you see yourself and you're okay.

If your attrition is 50% in a year, then I'm not the right person for you. If you want me to come help you work with efficiency and process, I can, but there might even be people that like would be just a better fit because I often can't, I can't make process decisions without understanding the bigger picture. That's me.

I just don't like, I was just working with someone this week on some rework that they were doing in the system. And I was like, okay, but you need to tell me like, what is the end goal? Is this a software of record?

Because if it is, then we need to go look at where there are things that are not in this. So I'm always going to be bigger picture. And I work hard to make sure I give clients bits and pieces of work that they can do because I do tend to like unearth more than maybe they expected me to unearth.

But so I work hard to make it feasible, but I 100% agree that like, if you are not in this to say, I want to build strong relationships, then yes, you can. And there are companies that can do that, right? There's transactional companies all over the place.

I just, that's not where I'm interested in helping a building. If somebody really wants to build a foundation, they want to build a business that where they know that retention is going to build revenue and they're not running themselves ragged in marketing and sales efforts because they have such attrition that they got a net out to a positive, right? They really do want to invest.

And I think in technology, if you don't believe that trust is your biggest element in winning a customer, then I got a whole educational process that you have to go through because it is so critical trust. And my two elements I say people have to look at are trust and ease. How much do they trust you and how easy it is to get work done with you?

And sometimes those things have to differ, ease often, especially in the world of security, but then the trust has to increase. And we have to bring in an element of what I call connection, which can be through education or assurance or those kinds of things that help you all work it together. But I do, I believe in that element that, and the relationship part is what I like to try to help technicians, engineers work on.

And they don't have to be perfect at it. They're still going to have that really snazzy, amazing networking brain in their head. But there are some phrases they can use that help them better relate and get to the right answer from the end user, from the customer.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, very nice, very nice. So first things first, training and consulting is the name of the business. You started that in 2023 when you- Two years ago this month.

When you did not want to be a W-2 anymore. Your goal is to help MSPs improve customer and revenue retention. And from what I can tell, your approach emphasizes those incremental improvements to customer relations.

So it's not going to be like a big, you know, major lift to do this. Strategic documentation of processes to enhance efficiency. And then you tailor your solutions to each business.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yes. So the things that I think are important are, I understand an MSP budget, right? I'm not working with medium to large businesses.

I'm specifically in the SMB market for a reason because I think a lot of people, customer experience, the phrase of customer experience, which often plays into retention, right? Has been, has truly been bastardized. And taken over by some really big software companies.

And you, as if you start to look out there and doing your research, you're going to think, ah, it's not approachable as an SMB because this software they want me to buy is, you know, quarter of a million dollars or 10, even 10 grand, 10, 20, 30 grand or whatever. I can't afford something like that that isn't critical to my business. I'm trying to take that back because customer experience, I started to study it in probably 2010 or so.

And really in reality, there's lots of low budget things you can do that can improve your customer experience. And so that's, and keeping it real in the sense that that's not going to mean that we have to like add 10 grand to the budget. It might mean that we actually take some money away from sales and marketing, dare I say that, to actually pull it into the retention of the customer.

So the idea is that experience is a journey. And sometimes people put a ton of money in sales and marketing and the client has a certain experience in that. And then when we get passed over to sales, they've been stripped down to the bare bones.

Or just pardon me, not sales, service. They've been stripped down to the bare bones and the experience all of a sudden is so drastically different. It's the difference in that.

It's like going from the Audubon to a dirt road. That difference is what reduces trust. And so it might be that I come in and say, let's take a look at this.

Let's look at how you are in each one of these phases. And I might say, you know what? Can we take a little bit from over here and put in another person over here or put in this surveying tool that's going to give you a good idea of what the actual feedback is or set up what I would call a listening post, which I borrowed that idea from an author who I'm now forgetting, but Nicholas Webb, I believe.

You know, how do we do this? So I'm not a person that's going to come in and say, this is the millions of dollars you have to spend. I want to work with what you have.

But it may mean allocating differently so that you have a much more consistent journey which builds trust, which builds relationship and retention and revenue.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So it's interesting that I brought you on during Uncle Marv's Marketing and Money Month and you made the comment, we might have to take money away.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Oh, I'm so sorry.

[Uncle Marv]
That's okay.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I just got to April.

[Uncle Marv]
That's okay. No, this will still be released in March. So it is what it is.

And I don't edit.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I think if you get things down, that's fine. But I think so many people throw there and they don't understand what they're covering up for experience by just getting new customers. In the end, they're like, well, I ended with more customers.

I'm like, right. But you lost 15 and you gained 18. Those 15 are out there roaming wild talking about your experience.

What is that doing to your marketing?

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. What's the point of bringing people in the front door when you're losing them out the back?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. That's why I think there's a point where you have to go crazy. When you're first starting, I understand the pen and the check mentality.

And I just got to get people in the door to pay the bills. I totally get that. But there comes a point in maturity that you have to start to rationalize.

Okay. I got to understand the experience so that when I'm speaking through sales and marketing, I'm properly setting them up for what it will really look like to deal with us. And I'm investing enough in that, that it's a positive experience.

I'm not talking Ritz-Carlton because that's always what people start to talk about experience. I'm not looking for Ritz-Carlton. I'm looking for consistency.

And that's what your clients are. I can guarantee, Marv, that's what you give to your clients. That's why they come to you even when they just need a laptop.

Right? Because you are consistent and you consistently give them good advice and you're an expert in what you do. And those are the key things that make people successful.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So we are going to get into more of this when we do the live show. We're going to dig more into the first things first.

Like I said, today was just a meet and greet. So I want to go back and ask you one question that I'm sure you didn't think I would ask. But when your mom made the comment about don't leave a compliment in your head, where did that come from in her mind and how did she explain it to you?

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Wow. That was so long ago. I don't know the origin.

I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess that she did not grow up in an environment where you got a ton of compliments. She was the only girl in a family of four.

And she will always say, I was the skinny, homely one. No one had anything good to say about me. So I think it was more so that she did have people that like spoke really good things into her life.

And so I think she personally felt the power of a compliment and people like believing in you. And so she never wanted us to withhold that from somebody out of fear of speaking up or anything of that sort. So I would have to say, I've never asked her the origin.

That's a great question. But that's where I would have to say it probably comes from because while her parents were very good humans, they just weren't of the nature that you like praise. It was more so like, hey, you just do what you need to do.

That was the good Italian background that they had. Just get the work done. So yeah, but I think that's really it.

[Uncle Marv]
I mean, that makes sense. I mean, my parents were kind of the same way. There wasn't a lot of love shared in the household.

It was just do your job.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yeah, yeah. And my mom was the exact opposite. My household was like, if you stepped out of line, there was correctional love to be had.

But in general, she was very open about like, love you, proud of you, that kind of thing. And so, and I think she just, and I've taught the same to my daughter and my daughter has seen how it opens conversations, especially in this world. Oh my heavens, do people need to hear good things about themselves, right?

So my daughter has done it and she'll say to me, oh mom, so I said to this, to so-and-so. And it was like a whole conversation we had then. And I said, well, compliments got me a job.

And I always remind her of the, I complimented her nails and then I got to this spot and that got me to this spot. So it's not, I don't want her to ever see it as it's a way to get something. It's just, it's better to give.

And I think it's, I think even more so. Yeah, the world needs to hear it. We need to hear what we're doing, right?

Because there's plenty of people waiting to tell us what we're doing wrong.

[Uncle Marv]
That's true. That is true. Do you find ways to include that in your training?

I mean, it's a part of me is thinking how in the world would an MSP do that? But you said it on an MSP show. So I want to see if there's a way to tie that in.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
Yeah, I think that we do. Like I talk a lot to, I talk to a lot of people about getting to know your customers down to the little details of things, right? And thanking people when they make your life easier.

So I had a situation come up. I was coaching a young man and he was having problems. He was on site at a client often, right?

And there was this one thing he had to do that he hated doing it. And I'm like, well, why do you hate doing it? Well, because people never come with what they need to come with.

And, you know, and it's always a saga. It takes 90 minutes. And I'm like, well, have you ever thought about sending an email in advance with a list of the things that people need to bring?

And I hadn't thought about that. And I'm like, cause we think people don't care. We think people are just out sometimes to make our lives more difficult.

And he did. And then there was the compliment of, hey, that helped a lot. I appreciate that.

And I do try to talk to coach people through compliments and also praising people. I said, don't patronize. But if you have a customer who's clearly not as tech savvy and they take a step that they would have never taken five or six months ago, compliment on them.

Recognize that. Say that, I'll call them end users, but I don't like that word. They are customers.

When you think of you, I said, nothing good is associated with a user. Why do we call them users? Like, there is no good user.

So customers, if they're not all that strong on technology, they need to hear that compliment of, hey, that was a really good first step. Where did you think of that? Or how did you learn that?

I think that, and that builds a relationship when you start with a compliment. So yeah, when I coach more on a one-on-one, I do talk about that definitely. Being able to recognize when people are making progress.

And obviously with your internal customers, with your employees, more people than we realize run on praise and not money. And we need to remember that, yeah, money pays the bills, but praise motivates. And not patronizing.

I want to be clear on that, not patronizing. But when you are genuinely impressed with somebody where somebody has come further in their knowledge, you need to leave that compliment with them. That's a great question.

Thank you for that.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, glad I thought of it. You made me think of something else, but I'm not going to bring that up now because we'll be off on another five-minute tangent. So I want to go ahead and end this off.

And again, remind the listeners that we are going to be back Wednesday, March 12th. You will be with me on the live show. And we'll get more into First Things First, your training and consulting.

The links will be in the show notes. And I should alert people, when they go and see the link to your website, it's going to be just the initials, FTFTAC.com. Because that's too long of a domain to make people write all the time.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
I started out with something closer to the real thing. And I was like, no, that doesn't make any sense. So yes, FTFT, which all sound like the same thing.

So I always say, yes, First Things First, training and consulting the first letters because otherwise it's too confusing. It's also very hard to see with old eyes, which I should have thought about.

[Uncle Marv]
So yeah, most of the techs are young. They'll survive.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
All right.

[Uncle Marv]
So Melissa, thank you very much for coming on the show. I look forward to having you back. And we'll have much more of a guided tour of First Things First.

And hopefully some MSPs will take note and learn some things.

[Melissa Hockenberry]
That'd be wonderful. Thanks for the opportunity. I enjoyed speaking with you today.

[Uncle Marv]
Same here. All right, folks. That's going to do it.

Thank you for downloading and subscribing and check the show notes for the links. And we'll see you for the live show on Wednesday, March 12th. That's going to do it.

We'll see you soon. And until next time, holla.